


The Chains Around Me (Are Finally Breaking)

by PoliticallyObsessedScholar



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Absent Parents, Coming Out, Gen, Homophobia, Kent Parson is a little shit, M/M, Mentorship, Self-Loathing, Suicide mention, and i love him, copious song mentions, self-actualisation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 04:08:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10654596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoliticallyObsessedScholar/pseuds/PoliticallyObsessedScholar
Summary: Kent Parson goes to Epikegster '14. On his return he decides to change things about his life.





	The Chains Around Me (Are Finally Breaking)

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Selena Gomez' Revival

Sitting on his kitchen floor, drinking white wine straight from the bottle, Kent Parson reminded himself that there were a number of things he liked about himself;

  1. He had a dazzling smile.
  2. Britney had come to one of his parties once and liked it.
  3. He had an excellent sense of humour. Well, he thought he did.



Admittedly there weren’t a lot of numbers on that list but he had had a rather shitty week if he was honest.

The kind of week where he looked at his cat and wondered who on earth put him in charge of any living creature, much less himself.

The kind of week where he drove down to help a friend but then understood too late that they’d ghosted, moved on, and really didn’t want to see him.

The kind of week where he drove home after screwing up with said friend listening to _Toxic_ , then had an epiphany that he was the _Toxic_ one.

He could have told himself that it was just that kind of week or the sheer amount of alcohol he’d consumed since returning home that made it so hard to find things that he liked about himself. Except he knew better and he wasn’t completely ok with feeling so fucking trapped and he wasn’t going to add self-delusion to his list of flaws. So after a solid day of further contemplation (complimented with Adele on repeat and copious amounts of coffee), Kent called Mr Carmichael. Mr Carmichael was the best. Mr Carmichael was like a life coach only better because he seemed to genuinely like Kent and wouldn’t go home, drink wine, and bitch about his client.

Mr Carmichael had given him gems of wisdom like:

“Kent, sometimes you have difficulty thinking, work on that” - the morning after he’d climbed to the top of the school roof in the middle of the night on a dare and then couldn’t get down.

“Kent, thanks for dropping by, I have this book I think you might be interested in” - before giving him Robert Fisk’s _Great War For Civilization_ because Mr Carmichael knew he _knew_ things and didn’t buy that he didn’t.

“Kent, I know you’re good at hockey, excellent actually. I have no doubt that you will go far but I want you to remember that you are more than that. You are more than who you are on the ice. There’s going to be a lot of pressure on you, there already is, but I want you to know that you don’t have to hide who you are on your way to where you’re going” - the day he left.

Kent might have had difficulty with that last one, and sometimes the first one, but it meant a lot.

Mr Carmichael had come to the Draft because his parents were busy and he’d looked really proud when Kent was drafted first. He was the only person Kent knew who didn’t think it was because Zimms had flamed the fuck out. The next day he sent Kent a long email talking about how proud he was of him.

The email had also contained a link to _The Show Must Go On_ (“I know this is really old music but I think you might appreciate it at this point in your life”) and rather obliquely a reference to the Trevor Project (“we had someone from the Trevor Project come talk to us about supporting all our students and how best to help them.”) Mr Carmichael could always see right through him.

Anyway, Kent needed to change things right the fuck now and he thought Mr Carmichael could help.

He ended up flying out to White Lake, Michigan when off-season began. Since Mr Carmichael was a teacher, and school wasn't over, he was the one who could commute, so that’s what he did.

It was odd being back, odd watching the green lawns and large houses roll by him in a procession. It was odd driving Mr Carmichael to a small coffee shop that had sprung up in the years he’d been gone. It was odd seeing Jenna Lewis and Harvey Mulligan picking up their kids and seeing Coach West pull in and order a Latte.

Still, he sat there, and drank a coffee that was unexpectedly smooth and rich. Better than his usual fare and explained only by the Australian accent of the barista. He sat there and told Mr Carmichael everything. Well, everything he’d glossed over in the weekly emails they exchanged since the Draft.

He told him about Jack. He told him how he’d met this shy boy who was slightly chubby and had the most amazing smile when you got him to relax. About the way some of the boys would cruel and say that Jack didn’t have his father’s talent if they weren’t busy shaming his body. About how they stayed out later on the ice than anybody else and how Jack spent every spare moment trying to prove that he was good enough. About how they’d gone to a party one night and someone had turned on the TV for background ambience and it was just late enough for the news.

A soldier had died in Iraq and he couldn’t help himself, he was just drunk enough to start talking about geopolitics and implications and how he stuttered to a stop when he noticed, terrified that this was the moment when he’d be thrown under the bus to be bullied in Jack’s stead. Except Jack had lit up and started talking about Sykes-Picot and the Paris Peace Conference. He told him that that was the moment he first realised when Jack said history was his favourite subject it meant exactly the same thing as hockey being his favourite sport.

He told him about flying high on the ice and watching Jack fall apart off it. About being too young and dumb to recognise that giving Jack alcohol to relax and telling him not to worry wasn’t what he should do. About not knowing how badly Jack needed help he couldn’t give until he returned to their hotel room to find paramedics at the door and a suicide note tucked under his pillow.

He told him about his first year in the Aces. He told him about having more money than he’d ever thought existed in the world. He could spend it on whatever he wanted and for a boy who grew up in hand-me downs, one gift per season, and less than five-dollars pocket money every two months - that was confusing. He told him how the team decided his modest apartment and proclivity for spending money only on books and his cat meant he was humble.

He told him about being lonely and terrified of the party culture that surrounded him until they took him to this one house party, oh a couple of months in, and he realised he had the right idea in the Q; alcohol was a brilliant way to forget. He told him about how easy it was, after that party, to get caught up in the cult of celebrity that surrounded him. How easy it was to become exactly who it was they thought he was: the epitome of what it meant to be young and Nouveau rich in modern America.

He told him about driving to Samwell the first time and thinking that Jack maybe needed another year.

He told him about driving to Samwell the second time.

“Jack was always, he’d always over think things you know? It was like there was one voice in his head saying he should jump and another saying he should stay and it was like... like Harry Potter. When he’s under Imperius and he resists but not completely so he ends up almost breaking his kneecaps? Yeah. It was like that. So I thought, I thought, well Jack’s always been focused on Hockey and the NHL. He’s never done anything to fuck that up except for when his head gets too loud. And staying at Samwell, one-in-four-maybe-more Samwell, doesn’t-rank-very-high-in-stats Samwell, doesn’t make sense. Not when the scouts are willing to take him again. It sends this message right? That he’s not serious about Hockey because he’s wasting his best years in the NCAA? So I thought it was Jack being paralysed by his brain again. And I told him, I told him he should just listen to me because I thought I knew what the fu- what I was doing. And then everything went wrong. He said I cornered him. He said I was trying to make him do what I wanted. And I mean, ok yeah, but I didn’t mean - I just missed him and I told him and he said it didn’t matter. I mean not in those exact words but that’s what he meant. And I just. I snapped. I’m not proud of the shit I said. I knew it would hurt him and I said it because it would because he’d just hurt me. But I just... I don’t know”

The thing about Mr Carmichael was that he didn’t indulge Kent’s shit. He looked right at him, took a sip of coffee, and came out with another one of those gems;

“Kent, you already know you did the wrong thing, you know why you did it, and you’re not here to figure out how to fix it. You’re here because you’ve just realised something you didn’t allow yourself to understand until this week probably - your relationship with Jack is over. He didn’t put his life on pause, he changed its trajectory, and I know that that’s hard but now you get to move on. You get to decide what you want your life to be like without him. You get to decide whether you’re happy with the way you’re living your life or not. If you aren’t, and it sounds like you aren’t, then I can help you figure out what you want to do to change that.”

The Kent Parson that returned to the Aces the next season was just different enough to get the team slightly concerned. Oh he still played rough and sometimes dirty on the ice. Whether you thought that his goal against the Falconers was an accident typical of the game (like the Refs did) or a dirty play (like Mashkov did) or a glorious combination of both (like Kent did) he knew how to play the game and he played it well. It was the off-ice changes that perplexed.

See, before, Kent kept his interests locked down tight and now he didn’t. He admitted in the privacy of his own head that it probably was weird that the guy who used to yell “shut up, the songs getting to the good part” now yelled “shut up, this LSE Q and A session just got wild.” It probably was weird that his chosen reading material was now composed of what could be found on a First Year’s Intro to International Relations course or the same hypothetical first year’s Intro to Philosophy course. It probably was weird that Party Parson started hosting board-game nights and went on expeditions to art galleries and museums.

It wasn’t like he stopped listening to pop music, or stopped reading magazines, or stopped going to parties but still, it probably was weird.

A fact which was solidified when his attendance at an event hosted by the Carnegie Council For Ethics in International Affairs (after winning the game against the mother-fucking Bruins) made headlines.  It was also followed by a confused call from an Aces Assistant GM;

“Listen, Kent, not that we’re complaining, honestly, but could you give us a heads up if you’re going to do something like this again?”

Kent had pretended to think about it and then started mentioning tickets to events he was attending hosted by Universities and Think-Tanks across the United States and Canada.  He also mentioned that his MOOC on Peace and Conflict Studies had an exam on the 13th and could he have the day off?

The Assistant GM had sounded a bit faint when they said it was fine and hung up.

Kent spent the next ten minutes laughing his head off while Kit Purrson looked at him in concern.

Anyway, Kent could understand why it was probably slightly confusing for the rest of the team. That didn’t mean that he understood why it led to the team taking him to an abandoned church and filming a fake exorcism led by Popes (he’d had a very strict Catholic Upbringing) who’d apparently consulted his brother, a Bishop, on stylistic points.

The resulting video gained a lot of traction and led to the team spending a glorious afternoon getting lectured by PR on “Respecting Religious Traditions” and “Appropriate Use of Your Social Networks”

It also led to Kent indulging in a glorious run of answering Press Questions with horror quotes

“Kent, can you comment on rumours of a trade between the Aces and the Bruins?”  
“Well, Jane, when it comes to trade rumours, it’s a good rule of thumb to believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear”

“Kent, why the sudden interest in philosophy?”  
“There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand and Philosophy is a great way to start grappling with that”

“Kent, can you comment on the general trend of the Aces towards a more ruthless and aggressive playing style?”  
“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

Admittedly it was that last one which tipped everyone off. It also led to the general consensus that, while Kent Parson may be indulging his intellectual side, he was still a little shit. Mr Carmichael sent him a link to a gifset of all his quotes in his weekly email, accompanied with a comment that he didn’t know what he had honestly expected.

It wasn’t a huge change, not in the big scheme of things, but it was statistically significant. It rebalanced him. Oh he wasn’t ready to come out to anyone, and he wasn’t generally an unpleasant person to be around, it was just slightly demoralising to have to hide his interests and intelligence all the time. Honestly, exactly one year to the day after Epikegster 14, Kent was pretty content with his life.

Then he met Ryan.

Ryan was a graduate student at Columbia studying The Implications of Mary Kaldors’ New War Thesis on US Army Strategy in the Iraq War. They started talking at a Carnegie Council event which was only tangentially related to Ryan’s research when everyone was waiting to leave. Paparazzi had worked out that Kent was going to be there and had predictably showed up at all exits. The organisers were trying to work out a way to either clear them off or get everyone out regardless.

Ryan had been sitting next to him during the lecture and he leaned over to speak:

“Apparently this is all happening because some sports star got interested in International Relations”

Kent had let out a gasp of mock surprise and said “Really?” in a tone of deep-sarcasm which completely flew over Ryan’s head.

“Yup. I mean I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal you know? Everyone should be interested in the world around them. It’s like, Breaking News - Human Being Interested in Humanity. Shocker”

Kent decided that he’d broken out his sarcasm a bit early. Ryan got it.

They continued to talk for a while and then they went off on a mutual tangent about Richard Ned Lebow after Kent confessed that he was currently his favourite thinker to grapple with. The organisers had managed to convince the paparazzi that the only people present here are academics and practitioners and the crowd had emptied out. Kent and Ryan had wandered off to a nearby cafe where they continued to talk about Constructivism until the shop closed. They had then relocated to Ryan’s apartment where they continued to talk until they grew too tired to stay awake.

The morning after, Ryan had to rush out to teach some undergraduates and they exchanged contact information.

In the months that followed, Kent spent so much time in New York that there started to be rumours he was being traded to the Bruins. This time he got a call from a PR-rep and reluctantly he dialled his visits back. Completely coincidentally this led to a downturn in his personal stats. Kent only realised the team had figured that out when one morning he walked into the locker room and was greeted by Swoops, Prezzy, and Tad belting out _New York State of Mind_. They’d only lasted one verse or so before collapsing into chirps about Kent’s new lady-friend.

It was also at that precise moment that Kent realised he might be in love with Ryan. He spent the rest of the day in a daze then he stumbled home and wrote a long email to Mr Carmichael. The reply was short, succinct, and to the point. It was a link to _How You Get the Girl_ with the note that Kent should “change pronouns appropriately.” Kent responded that “historically that didn’t work out so well for me, see the Samwell visits of 2011 and 2014.” Mr Carmichael took longer to respond to that one. This time the email was a couple of paragraphs long and talked about bravery and granting yourself the right to be happy and he concluded by saying that the time was probably right to have a conversation when your teammates started chirping you.

Kent didn’t have that conversation.

What he did instead was completely take leave of his senses and march in Las Vegas Pride. He went all out, wore a shirt that said “Nobody Knows I’m Gay,” and hung a gay pride flag from his shoulders. Pictures of him laughing with marchers, engaged in a passionate discussion, or dancing started to spread across the internet. He knew because his phone started to vibrate insistently - he ignored it. At the end of the march, he caught a taxi home (while the driver gave him a side-eye) and started to remember all the reasons why this was a Very Bad Idea and Potentially Self-Destructive.

It didn’t stop him from uploading one of his favourite pictures of the day to all his social networks. It had been taken so that he stood in profile, looking slightly up, while laughing. His cape was waving slightly with his movement and the soft afternoon sun bathed him in an ethereal glow. He captioned it “I am the Love that Dare not Speak its Name ~ Lord Alfred Douglas” then went the fuck to sleep.

The next morning he got up, made a coffee, and saw that Kit Purrson had made herself comfortable on his Pride Flag. He snapped a picture of that, uploaded it uncaptioned onto her Instagram, then set to work contacting everyone who was freaking out about what he’d done.

Over the next couple of months, Kent realised that coming out was a really dumb way to distract himself from having an awkward conversation. Yes, it did leave him with no time to do anything else and thereby made the avoiding thing very easy but what that time was filled with was depressing.

There were warnings from his Agent that he had to behave in an exemplary manner in the upcoming season or he’d be traded for being unmanageable, just as soon as they could dodge accusations of homophobia.

There were his new bodyguards (Steve and Carl, stoic and tragically recalcitrant) as well as his weekly meetings with the police about new threats against his life.

There were the picketers, the shouted slurs, the vandalisation of his property, and commentary that danced on the border of overt homophobia.

There was the way his mother kept trying to get him to talk to her Pastor and begging him to realise that the way he was, was wrong.

There was the angry voicemail from Zimms - ranting about how Kent was so incredibly selfish, thoughtless, and inconsiderate. He was being hounded by reporters about their past and his own sexuality had been called into question. He’d been “planning to come out on my own terms you dick, I might not have a choice now. Are you fucking happy?”

There was the way that, despite having been his best friends on the team, Lads and Jazzer refused to hang out with him.

The only reason Kent didn’t drown was thanks to Ryan’s daily messages of support or levity. He’d send through funny videos or funny stories or he’d share something encouraging he’d heard about Kent that day.

It also didn’t actually prevent the awkward conversation. Ryan had sent him a short text the day after Pride which simply said “I’m gay too. It’ll be ok.” He appreciated it but it did mean that he had to actually find his courage and have the feelings talk with Ryan anyway. Luckily it had ended with them both laughing over cups of coffee and his second proper boyfriend. The first he could be publically happy about.

Also, there was balance. It wasn’t just the tough shit. Kent got letters from parents and coaches and kids thanking him. Every game he played, event he attended, or interview he gave came with a group of people from local LGBT groups who’d decided to support him. He gave interviews where he could be completely honest about who he was and what he loved. There were players on other teams (and Jags from his own) who told him in confidence that they were too. He felt lighter and freer, he played the best hockey of his life.

He was nominated for the Lady Byng, Hart Memorial, Bill Masterson, Ted Lindsay, and King Clancy.  He didn’t win any of them. He would have been outraged but by that point , by a season of slurs and violent checking, he wasn’t even surprised. There was a reason why none of the players who’d come out to him had come out after him. Not even Jack.

Still, he’d been able to take Ryan to the ceremony with him. He was able to stand in front of the camera’s with the first date he’d actually wanted to be there. He was able to go home afterwards, talk to his boyfriend about his frankly incorrect thoughts on Francis Fukuyama, and then kiss him senseless to shut him up.

Kent wouldn’t put money on it or anything but he thought he was starting to like himself.

**Author's Note:**

> While I was writing most of Mr Carmichael's scenes I listened to 'To Sir With Love' and honestly you should too.


End file.
